On the night of November 30th 1966 occurred an event which was to change Michael’s life forever. He had spent some hours that evening in a pub called The Ship, in Wardour Street, which was then one of several Soho pubs frequented by the music business; but he had left after an impassioned argument with music manager Tony Stratton-Smith.
Feeling rather disturbed by this argument (of which maybe more another time), he took a train to Finchley Road, where he visited some friends; then, realizing he had missed the last bus home, he hitched a lift which took him as far as Mill Hill, from where he intended to walk the rest of the way. Always as much a poet as a musician, Michael used to enjoy rambling around the deserted streets of suburban areas of London at night, finding inspiration there – and, with much on his mind after the events of earlier that evening, as he slowly made his way homeward, he wandered up a narrow tree-lined turning, deep in thought and talking to himself. When he re-emerged a few minutes later, he was suddenly grabbed from behind and thrown to the ground by a person who turned out to be a police officer, claiming to have seen him attempting to burgle a house!
To cut a long story short, he was taken to a police station where, despite his denials, he was charged with “being a suspected person, found loitering with intent to commit a felony” (the notorious, and now repealed, “Sus” law), and subsequently found guilty of this offence in the local magistrates court and fined accordingly.
But Michael was a person who wanted to believe in society and its institutions, rather than engage in slick cynicism, and against the advice of many who told him to just forget about it and get on with his life, he set out to appeal. The enforced activity of applying before a High Court judge for legal aid, finding a barrister and solicitor to represent him, and preparing his case for the appeal, acted as a kind of therapy which enabled him to keep his sanity; and, as the newspaper cutting shows, the appeal was successful, even if Mike was not so happy to be warned by the Judge (Mr Richard Vick) that for his own good he should not in future go out wandering late at night….
Fortunately for us he took little notice of this warning, and some of his best songs have come from the times when he would hang around in empty night-time or early morning streets. But the whole episode, occurring when he was in his early 20’s, had a huge effect on his later life.
Not forgetting the “Poem For A Loiterer” – one of some 80 different broadsheets of Mike’s, that he and I, working together, would print multiple copies of, and sell on the streets of London and many other towns and cities around the UK, in the 1970’s.
The Story Of Situation Art 